Editor’s Notice: As President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discuss assembly face-to-face in Alaska later this week to debate an finish to the warfare in Ukraine, The Cipher Temporary is publishing this uncooked and unfiltered private account of at this time’s warfare by the eyes of a former U.S. Particular Forces operator, who’s preventing alongside Ukrainian troopers. We have now granted his request for anonymity for private safety causes. You possibly can learn extra from the creator on his X account.
OPINION / EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — I wrote this report on the night time of Twenty second-Twenty third July 2025 within the house of two and a half hours, after midnight, and after having not completed any writing in years; and thus, I may be forgiven, I hope, for my idiosyncrasies and informality. I am a soldier.
I’m going by the callsign ‘Xen’ and I at present work beneath a Ukrainian Particular Operations Forces (SOF or “SSO” in Ukraine) regiment. My crew chief and I are each former U.S. Particular Operations personnel. With out losing time on the small print, I’ll say that we’re “true believers” who supported Ukraine lengthy earlier than we left the U.S. army and lengthy earlier than the full-scale Russian invasion.
My causes for coming to Ukraine as a soldier-volunteer have been so intensely private. I used to be motivated by ethnicity, historical past, philosophy, and a deep instinct of the place all indicators in my life have been pointing.
I principally spun my wheels my first yr in Ukraine – it was extra Jarhead than Band of Brothers. I’m now actively taking part in fight operations – particularly, rotary and stuck wing drone strike operations. We practice (and nowadays are educated by…), advise, help, accompany, and allow Ukrainian SOF; and in such capability, have near-total freedom of motion, granting us a breadth and depth of understanding throughout the battle.
Everybody is aware of how badly Ukraine upset the notion of Russian invincibility in 2022. Sadly, up to now two years, it has change into clear that Russia shouldn’t be such a joke in spite of everything, which ought to come as no shock to college students of historical past.
Regardless of fierce resistance and sensible innovation, Ukraine is shedding floor at an unsustainable fee, and morale is dropping. Whereas it will nonetheless take fairly a couple of years on paper for Russia to realize its warfare targets, the actual fact is that collapse on the entrance could also be imminent.
What does this warfare seem like now?
A 20-year-old soldier sits in his bunker with a small crew, on a mission he deliberate himself, flying $500 drones that have been assembled by volunteers in some basement based on a always up to date distributed protocol. Refinements to the drones are made at his battalion’s casual drone lab, the place some components are 3D-printed and others are crowdfunded. The younger soldier screens by way of Starlink a always rotating livestream of quadcopter or fixed-wing expendable drone ISR platforms, both freely asking to kill or ready to be directed by an obligation officer to take action. His crew is all the time making small changes and making an attempt new issues with their drones, floor stations, and antennas, regardless that most of them had zero engineering expertise earlier than discovering themselves right here. It is a far cry from the duties of a U.S. Marine infantry lance corporal.
From his place a couple of kilometers from the entrance, our drone soldier will fly his drones towards infantry only one to 10 kilometers deep into enemy territory. The infantry they hunt stroll relentlessly ahead, across the clock, like zombies, singly or in pairs (or small groups) by rubble, tree traces, and even open fields. They’ve little alternative however to take a rifle and press ahead for a fast demise – what waits behind them is worse. Some trip motorbikes simply to hurry the method.
Even when 95% of them are killed of their march, a small share will go by the big gaps within the porous, skinny Ukrainian defenses, and will shock and gun down the unsung Ukrainian infantry or mortar groups. Some might even make it far sufficient to slaughter drone groups of their hides. In the event that they take even one tree line a day throughout a entrance, it’s greater than sufficient.
This entire drama unfolds each in entrance of officers in conventional Tactical Operations Facilities, and more and more, in entrance of splintered command groups and people watching from safehouses by way of livestream. On the finish of the mission, the soldier will go dwelling and go on his kill footage to attain “factors” for his command to obtain further official funding.
Sadly, this younger soldier’s service is minimize brief when he was wounded whereas being pushed to his subsequent place in a Humvee. Maybe it was a fiber optic FPV drone, or a remotely laid mine, or a loitering munition guided by an expendable ISR drone, or a radio-guided FPV drone indifferent from its mothership-repeater platform, or – more and more seemingly now – an autonomous terminal assault munition.
Regardless of the weapon, it was finally deployed towards him by a highly-skilled Russian drone crew, hiding 5 or twenty kilometers behind the meat protect of infantry. By a mix of sheer evolutionary strain, the vestiges of a command-economy, and assistance from overseas powers (China particularly), Russia has of late, managed to largely out-innovate and out-scale Ukraine.
His good friend at one other unit continues the struggle fairly in a different way. He drives to warfare in an unmarked van or truck, flying midrange (30-80 km) drone missions from 10-20 kilometers from the entrance, destroying exquisitely costly Russian rocket artillery, digital warfare programs, and air protection programs. When he’s completed together with his mission, he drives from his bunker to a village simply a number of kilometers away and stops for a espresso, melting into the inhabitants earlier than rigorously making his method again to a safehouse.
The enemy would love nothing greater than to search out the place he sleeps or works and ship aerial bombs or midrange drones his method. He’s additionally a younger soldier with little understanding of intelligence company fieldcraft, however he nonetheless diligently swaps SIM playing cards or locations units in Faraday baggage as finest he is aware of how, hoping it’s sufficient to masks his digital signature. When a neighboring crew is focused, it’s troublesome to say simply what they did mistaken or how they have been pinpointed, or if it was in reality, only a random strike.
And what in regards to the troopers who perform deep strike operations, launching drones from 50 or 100 kilometers or extra from the entrance, hanging 500 kilometers or extra deep towards logistics and trade? Ought to they even trouble carrying uniforms once they hop out of a van for a pair hours to launch their pre-programmed drones, only for a traitorous native to simply establish them and textual content their location to the enemy?
And with how rapidly the short- to mid- to deep-strike ranges have elevated in only a couple years of recent warfare, and the way quickly people are being taken out of the loop, and with how a lot engineering the typical drone soldier is being requested to grasp and carry out – how for much longer will it even make sense for educated troopers to struggle this manner? Why not merely have the businesses launch the drones on their very own?
In reality, Discipline Service Representatives already usually ride-along with drone groups, to point out easy methods to accurately make use of their platforms. I’m not even speaking right here of the actual fact somebody may remotely make use of unmanned weapons programs from throughout the globe, in idea.
Listed below are some related societal forces or technological developments which might be driving the large warfare revolution that’s taking place in Ukraine: digitization, democratization, automation, miniaturization (Moore’s legislation), deflationary element prices, crowdfunding, cryptocurrency, social media, networked units, open supply / open protocol, decentralization, distribution, crowd engineering, soldier as engineer, engineer as soldier, 3D printing (broadly outlined), AI (broadly outlined), sensor fusion, and on and on.
“Necessity is the mom of invention”, and Ukraine has had a couple of years now to invent. The answer has largely been compartmentalized and decentralized, coming from the underside up. But when an observer nation, with out the plain impetus of open warfare, wished to be prepared forward of time to cope with an adversary (equivalent to China) who has been steadily innovating in parallel, what can they do?
The sum impact of the above components is that this: if a top-down resolution within the West is to compete with both the previous backside up strategy seen in Ukraine or the authoritarian top-down strategy of Russia and China, there should be an enormous acceleration of the army and industrial OODA (observe, orient, resolve, act) loop with respect to tech employment (when it comes to technique, doctrine, TTPs, organizational construction, funding, and scaling). Our present decrepit establishments within the West can not obtain this and require radical restructuring. Hopefully, that is self evident and I don’t must launch right into a monologue in regards to the army industrial advanced, our personal American model of corruption, our slow-moving congressional approvals course of, our fascination with extremely costly flagship packages, and many others.
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Ukraine has far outstripped its personal outlays for drone manufacturing, creating an trade from nothing to provide thousands and thousands of drones. These drones are sometimes already partly autonomous (usually totally autonomous within the case of deep strike) and have gotten extra so each week. Moreover, autonomy is coming to cheaper and cheaper drones.
My private predictions for the tempo of growth and course of the warfare have usually shocked folks, however on reflection, have appeared conservative. My prediction right here is that the overwhelming majority of drones utilized in Ukraine which might be produced for lower than $2000 will probably be totally or near-fully autonomous (as desired) inside two years, and that decrease expert troopers will use them as shorter vary fire-and-forget weapons whereas elite groups will command drones in a swarming capability, like in a technique sport. We already management single drones and drone motherships by way of top-down perspective and point-and-click instructions. If that is attainable in Ukraine, what precisely are China’s capabilities?
I’ll go away it to assume tanks and historians to determine linkages between the spreading fires of worldwide battle. What I do know is that battle is certainly spreading and the first adversaries are fairly clear. The Chinese language know we’re their enemy. The U.S. army overtly refers to them as our adversary. So long as empires emerge (nevertheless veiled is their kind), and so long as they challenge and debase fiat foreign money and debt, my idea holds that world wars will proceed.
I’m not right here to guage proper or mistaken. We’re the Athenian “empire”, with our allies preferring to suckle off us fairly than develop robust militaries of their very own, and we in flip draw back from making good on our guarantees. Our enemy – the Russians and Chinese language (the Spartan “empire”) might seem backwards to us now, however can summon a conquering, jealous power that we will’t actually perceive till it has touched us. If impartial or allied nations watch us enable Ukraine or Taiwan to fall, they’ll roll over to the axis arrayed towards us. (Sue me when you do not like Peloponnesian Conflict metaphors.)
From historic empires to the Napoleonic Wars to the buildup to WW2, we must always perceive {that a} nation which achieves complete victory over one other nation, removed from being exhausted, can usually simply springboard to additional conquests, influencing or urgent the defeated populace into swelling their forces and sources. It isn’t unthinkable that Russia may steamroll over Europe in the event that they defeat Ukraine, which (exterior of Russia) has Europe’s largest army and largest geographical footprint.
The Chinese language are getting ready for warfare at breakneck pace and are participating in rising saber-rattling. They’re supplying either side of the warfare in Ukraine with elements – thereby scaling their very own trade for warfare – however they’re principally lending help to the Russians. They’re studying far sooner than the West, already making steps for the combination of drones right down to the bottom ranges of their army construction. They’re most likely nicely forward of the Russians and Ukrainians by now when it comes to swarming and autonomous drone applied sciences.
Within the USA, we might retain an edge when it comes to the farthest reaches of our technical developments, however when it comes to integration, scaling, and institutional data, we fall brief.
We’re fortunate if a regiment has a drone platoon. We arrogantly assume that digital warfare and strategic airpower will avail us towards the Chinese language. If handfuls of Ukrainian naval drones may defeat the Russian navy within the Black Sea, how precisely do we expect an American service battle group can defend itself towards ten or 100 thousand totally autonomous Chinese language USVs and UAVs of varied courses? Assuming the battle group may even monitor and interact the incoming swarm, it doesn’t have sufficient munitions to cease it, and digital warfare will probably be of little use towards an autonomous foe.
If we place our hopes on some protection (by no means thoughts that “the bomber all the time will get by”) innovation like directed power towards UAVs, do we actually assume these will probably be fight prepared, scaled, built-in, and educated on so that each vessel has layered 360-degree protection with them – within the subsequent two years?
And if Ukraine’s Safety Service was in a position to cripple Russian strategic air energy with a handful of small quadcopters in Operation Spiderweb, what precisely can we count on the Chinese language to have ready for us? What’s to cease a number of civilian-flagged Chinese language tankers off the coast of the U.S. from opening a whole bunch of transport containers concurrently and launching 1000’s of expendable (say, $20,000 every) autonomous deep-strike UAVs at our energy grid or different key targets?
Individuals who can not fathom such an assault are naïve. In my earlier profession, associates at U.S. customs informed me that Chinese language nationals had been stockpiling rifles within the U.S. by coercing their trade college students learning in America to buy searching rifles by way of a loophole. The scholars, earlier than departing, would benefit from one other loophole to present the rifles to incoming trade college students, who would additionally purchase rifles, creating an ever-increasing stockpile. U.S. Customs and Border Safety finally bought clever to it and began monitoring them.
Additionally, Chinese language nationals within the U.S. are infamous for penetration-testing U.S. army amenities, for instance merely making an attempt to drive vans straight by gate guard posts. Presumably these aren’t elite spies doing this, however fairly scared people who find themselves beneath coercion, not wanting hurt to befall their households throughout the ocean. It is a problem for the American thoughts to grasp however is actuality.
Individuals additionally assume our lifestyle won’t ever go away so long as we’ve got this or that, such because the Second Modification – “A rifle behind each blade of grass”. But when we lose our dominant standing on the planet – our “empire” of types – with its huge management over the worldwide monetary system, that lifestyle will disappear essentially.
Our dominance is a strategic deterrence towards chemical, organic, and nuclear threats (Ukraine’s plight is instructive right here) originating exterior our borders. And over a era or two we may simply discover ourselves fractured and carved up after progressively shedding first monetary dominance after which the flexibility to cohesively defend ourselves. To not point out, if you’d like your iPhone, you higher be capable to defend worldwide transport and funds. It might appear an amoral tackle worldwide affairs, however don’t overlook within the international locations that might take our place as king, dissention is punished virtually universally by demise or disappearance. We nonetheless retain the ethical excessive floor, regardless of our flaws and misadventures.
So, what ought to the U.S. do now? It’s fairly apparent when you’ve learn the entire above. Cease hand-wringing in regards to the dominos that will fall if Russia collapses as a result of shedding to Ukraine. Overtly and totally help Ukraine, give them what they should win this warfare. We have now a key window of alternative earlier than mass-produced low-cost autonomous drones are unleashed, throughout which American financial strain and strategic hanging energy may collapse a fragile Russia in a single day or virtually in a single day. Subsequent, associate with Ukraine and use their institutional data to coach, advise, and help our personal army and trade in revamping and scaling.
From the best ranges of energy, whether or not within the personal or public sector, somebody who’s a “true believer” must order work to be completed. A top-down restructuring of the army and procurement course of would work. Or a whole bunch of billions in personal funding to create the drones, prepared to be used when the general public sector will get clever, would work too.
The above actions will function an actual and psychological deterrent to our different enemies, giving us respiration room to organize for the inevitable.
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